Fairweather

Nice pictures and trip. We did this in 2009 and spent three of our five days in the rain and hail. But the two nice days we did get were unforgettable. Manacus, I agree. Not to sound too elitist here, but guiding should not be allowed in this area--at least not in high-ratio groups. The Wilderness Act 1964: Section 4c - Prohibition of Certain Uses: Except as specifically provided for in this Act, and subject to existing private rights, there shall be no commercial enterprise and no permanent road within any wilderness area designated by this Act and, except as necessary to meet minimum requirements for the administration of the area for the purpose of this Act. . .

I don't know about kittens, but Montesano has a lot of these:

so much for Off_White enforcing the "language will get you banned" line... I suppose he feels that putting a "z" on the end of his vile misogynistic rants will keep him safe.

I see you've shifted from "you're lying" to a more informed "who cares, you have it coming." Well done. Medicare is great since it supports older, typically retired folks. But it's supported by the larger system and most I know--including my parents--have to spend between $200 and $350 per month (each) in additional private insurance to cover the "gaps" that the government won't pay for. What's more, Obama is taking $700Bn out of Medicare over the next ten years to pay for...Obamacare. Kind of a shell game. Finally, I don't expect a civil discussion with cc.com's resident thug, but if you could avoid this in the future, it would be great.

...and that Vasque Juxt he's wearing is on sale at REI for $99.00(for the pair). Seriously though, what keeps a guy like that from going into shock?

Whether it was a lie or a broken promise doesn't really make any difference to me--or millions of other middle-class Americans. As for the law being a "poor product of compromise," well, I recall one party rule at the time it was passed. The fact that it was seen by most Democrats and Obama as a "stepping stone" to single-payer was no secret then, and it's no secret now. In the long run, it may be exactly what Generation E wants. But there are still a lot of us who don't, and I don't think it's going to work out well for the Dems in the near or medium term. The Republican bungling that shut down the government will be a thing of the past by Nov 2014--but this healthcare fuckup will still be on everyone's mind.

Not sure how this can be spun as an "unintended consequence." (Or how you can justify it.) He and his fellow Dems wrote the law and this was clearly a lie. [video:youtube]CuLp--VveIA

Looks like somewhere between 2 and twelve million of us "aren't paying our bills" as cc.com's well-insulated-from-reality-resident-know-it-all believes. CBS News Sometimes it's just sad to see how long slow kids will keep trying to fit that peg in the wrong hole--and likewise to hear the stories they'll concoct to explain their failing worldview. Single-payer? Heck, this idiot president and his Democrat moron worshipers can't even get a much simpler program right with four years of lead time. I'd say that Obamacare hasn't done single-payer socialist dreamers like TTK any favors this go-round. And it's gonna get worse for them as more Obamacare bullshit is revealed.

Yep, I think there's gonna be a lot more of that. "You mean...it's not gonna be FREE???" Once the bulk of the middle class realizes they were lied to about keeping their doctor, insurance, etc., the party of social engineering is going to pay dearly--as they should.

Geeez, and you wonder why people don't like you? The reason they gave is the provision under the ACA that, for all intents and purposes, eliminates the catastrophic plan my wife and I preferred. You never learn do you FW? A leopard does not change its spots. Yep, you were right. Note to self: do not share personal anecdotes in the presence of tools--particularly ones that fly in the face of a particular utopian worldview. Of course I can't just "fix" my problem since I can't get straight answers from OB & Co--or even a legitimate quote! Well done TTK & friends.

Geeez, and you wonder why people don't like you? The reason they gave is the provision under the ACA that, for all intents and purposes, eliminates the catastrophic plan my wife and I preferred.

I'm glad you're amused, but I don't need FOX News to tell me the first part of your post is true. My wife and I received our cancellation notice from United Health Care last month telling us that our coverage ends this Thursday. Well done, Democrats; we're much happier now.

This seems to read like a defacto admission that your fellow Ds are more likely to be lured in by the folly of this initiative than those on the other side? As for the tomacco, well, I was mildly disappointed when I bit into this vegetable (or is it a fruit?) and discovered it contained a pig's eyeball and a cuttlefish tentacle that tasted like Roundup.

I522 - Nothin sweeter than being in the know at the same time you're gettin even with big evil corporations...

I'm voting no on 522 simply because I think it will fall prey to the rule of unintended consequences. Still, I think there is an unspoken problem with genetically altered food. As science continues to expand the possible vis-a-vis food production, the human population continues to expand commensurate with available resources--just as Malthus predicted. And the natural environment and the social fabric will continue to become more and more marginalized. I'm not saying we should dial back or that people should be allowed to starve, but there is a correlation between plentiful, cheap food and an expanding human population. (1900 <2Bn; 2013 >7.5Bn.) When it comes to genetically re-sequenced food, I think a line will need to be drawn at some point.

Yeah, but the scene at the end--with the glorious dam run by Tanya--clearly a statement that Russian communism had "worked out the bugs," no?

As you know, I'm not a big fan of the Catholics or the commies. My opinion of the latter was trying to reconcile the writings of Alexander Solzhenitsyn and maniacal commie behavior in places like Hue and Phnom Penh with the largely favorable portrayal they received right here in Doctor Zhivago. I do remember following Apollo 13 though--just like the rest of the space program. As for the Apollo-Soyuz, wasn't there initially some kind of dispute over which side was going to have the "male" appendage in the docking mechanism?

[video:youtube]eEhQ5nauXgY

Not sure that any other species forgoes the kill and sets it up again like this. I'm probably wrong, though. Cats playing with mice? (God help me if I have to put cats in the "agency vested" column.) Wolves are almost certainly way up there, and the analogy with Orcas has been made for centuries. As for your Irish nurture/nature thing, I agree it's compelling. But don't forget that a human newborn is one of the most helpless creatures on the planet. My guess is that there are hard phenotypic protocols that control behavior at birth, and then there are genes--maybe even ortholog code--that control how we interpret the social data we start accumulating at birth. If I had to guess right now, I'd say we humans are a 50/50 mix of nurture-nature. To go beyond this on the nature side, it seems to me, is a dark path that leads to a place my own European ancestors dabbled in not too long ago. Going back to my crappy BIOS/RAM/Hard-drive analogy, maybe the hard-wired cultural differences you describe on the nature side are akin to the way we process data--say, an Intel chip versus an ADM processor. Same bios/board instructions, same data inputs, slightly different interpretations hardly noticeable to anyone but "the other." Just spewing here.

http://matrix.static.nationalgeographic.com/video/places/regions-places/polar-regions/orca-juvenile-training-lex/

Hard to say. The current belief is that we're pretty much blank slates at birth with a few exceptions like crying, and smiling. The imprinting and manipulation begins almost immediately, however. A good book on the topic--still relevant, IMO--is The Social Construction of Reality, by Peter Burger and Thomas Luckman. It's pretty standard fare in most social science graduate programs; you'd probably like it.

That's really cool. I was 14 when the rendezvous took place and it was the most excitement I'd had since Apollo 13 blew a tank a few years earlier. I hate to say it, but the geopolitical world was a much more understandable place back in the days when you and I lived on the brink of a nuclear holocaust.

You were, indeed, exposed here. Humans see animal intelligence and emotional range through a very narrow lens. We don't see most of what they do in the wild, our experiments are simplistic, and we've only crudely deciphered a tiny fraction of their languages. Adaption, nature's analog for distributed artificial intelligence, can seem like cognitive prowess - during his recent visit my biologist nephew told me of a spider that preys on other spiders than can mimic over 50 different kinds of prey when pretending to be stuck in its prey's web. Even a polar bear, the most imaginative predator in the world, hasn't been observed to have as many tricks up its sleeve (although it comes close). Adaption sans higher intellect falls pretty short, however, when you observe, as I did in Vancouver several years back, 3 orcas after a marine show delicately balancing their last fish on their lower lip so they can tease the seagulls - presenting the fish, fading back - before gifting those fish to the seagulls in the end. It was the last part that really got me - lots of species play, but these animals have a strong sense of fairness that extends across the boundary of species - even a prey species no less. That's amazing. Or, perhaps, those orcas were practicing some less than amazing seagull catch and release because they weren't hungry and had some time to kill. Maybe they were inviting those seagulls to become lunch next time. It would be great to be able to ask them. We will eventually figure out how to communicate with orcas and the like. It will be interesting to hear their thoughts on their captivity and circus stardom. At first glance, I'm a skeptic--after all, the behavior you describe is similar to that of an Angler Fish. But there are a few videos of pods cooperating in threes and more to create waves to wash seal pups off of small ice floes. And in at least one instance, they place a doomed seal pup back up on the ice as a training exercise for the young Orcas in the pod. Not to get all philosophical, but this is clearly a social construction post-priori. In other words, a Border Collie will herd sheep--even if he's never seen one. It's phenotypical behavior. It's in his code--the code that sits in his BIOS chip, for lack of a better analogy. But this Orca behavior is being learned and passed on, and this puts them in a higher category, IMO. I'm convinced. The documentary also presented MRI scans that show enormous emotional centers in the Orca brain, and a heartbreaking segment where an entire pod tries to defend their doomed pups in Puget Sound (in 1970) while the SeaWorld bastards perform a combo kidnap/murder. Finally, if language lies at the center of culture--as most social scientists believe--then these whales really are more than simple mimes looking for a meal or a booty call. I'd probably put elephants in this higher-ordered category too. They imprint learned behaviors on their young, cry for their dead--and often bury them.

Smart little fuckers, for sure. One of the few species that have ever been observed using tools, I've read somewhere. And those barrel rolls they do up at Muir serve no purpose but fun.

Did any of you watch the documentary Blackfish on CNN last night? I'm not a big animal rights guy, but I've believed for a long time that Orcas and a few other species belong to a much higher order of sentient beings. The presentation was compelling and sickening at the same time. The bastards at SeaWorld and similar parks should be jailed the same as any other kidnappers and violent abusers.